Welcome fellow colorists, retouchers, and photographers!

By using programs such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture, you can transform your photos - enhancing the subject, fixing composition, and setting a mood. By submitting your RAW files for help, edits for critique, and questions about processing, the reddit community will be able to help you create an amazing final photo.

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I've become increasingly frustrated with lightroom x vscofilm packs in that I can't seem to achieve the look I'd like. I also have a difficult time explaining what exactly it is I'm trying to accomplish. I like the images that trashhand did for the raised by wolves lookbook because he is able to get things looking somehow extremely crisp/contrasty but at the same time smooth. As if what's sharp in the image is still soft, or at least on the edges. If anyone understands what the hell I'm talking about, I would really appreciate some guidance in selecting the proper film presets and other post-processing work flows to achieve this.

I have all vscofilm packs and that's a large stumbling block for me, I can't seem to find a film that I like. It's either too faded/gimmicky looking or it looks too true to life/just not appealing. I like that trashhand balances the two, they don't feel over the top but have fades/colors that I find extremely appealing. Thank you!

You can also use VSCO presets as your baseline if you'd still like to get some use out of them. Don't like how gimmicky looking it is? Move the hues back to a more "true to life" color spectrum and fiddle with contrast/whites and blacks. Don't like that it's "true to life and boring?" Mess with the hues/luminance/contrast/clarity/vibrancy until it pops a little more.

Some may see VSCO as gimmicky itself and I understand why. BUT I've learned a lot using the presets because I didn't always like them either, but learned to tweak them and create my own variations that I was happy with.

Trash is an unreal photographer. He's not just slapping on a custom VSCO filter. I'm sure the picture straight out of camera looks solid and then his post processing puts it over the top and aligns with his own personal style.

I realize he's not just slapping a filter on but they're starting points and do a lot of the groundwork to getting images with the same, consistent feel. I realize the equipment he shoots with and the time/consideration put into light/setting/subject matter/frame/etc.

Thanks so much for this! Finally had a chance to try it out and I think it works pretty well on similar images, and for other tonally different stuff I found that using your steps as a baseline and tweaking things around helps a lot too.